1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scanning apparatus, and more particularly, to a scanning apparatus for scanning a binding document.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the growth of scanning technology, scanners are becoming widespread and applied at home or office. A scanner is capable of capturing objects and is utilized in scanning documents, photos, and books. The captured digital image data can be displayed and stored in a computer, so that the image data can be permanently stored and the space that the objects occupied may be saved; meanwhile, the image data can also be edited or delivered by the user for a variety of applications of the image data.
Scanners can be classified into flatbed scanners and sheet-fed scanners according to different operation. The sheet-fed scanner is capable of automatically feeding sheets and is generally used for scanning a large amount of sheets. The flatbed scanner is particularly used for scanning binding documents or books. It is impractical to scan the binding documents or a book by the sheet-fed scanner without detaching the sheets from the binding. However, the binding documents or books can properly be scanned by use of the flatbed scanner. When a book is opened and placed on a scanning flatbed, the spine of the book makes it difficult to fully lay flat on the scanning flatbed, causing unsatisfactory scanning result like lack of clarity or shadows on the images. Hence, a flatbed scanner with an inclined surface can properly place the spine and the pages of the book can be laid flat on the flatbed such that a clear image may be obtained. However, the book to be scanned has odd pages and even pages, these scanners with one inclined surface can only scan one page at a time and need a 180 degrees rotation of the book after finishing scanning an odd page before the even page can be scanned. Also when scanning discontinuous pages, such as merely even pages or merely odd pages, the conventional scanner is incapable of recognizing that these pages are discontinuous. Therefore, it is an important issue to design a scanner capable of recognizing the discontinuous pages and automatically carrying out appropriate procedures so that the discontinuous pages may be distinguished for conveniently previewing, reading, and printing.